Tuesday, 27 June 2017

I have two kids – boys aged 13 and 15. Both sweethearts and
they both love music. They spend hours with those fizzy earbuds plugged into
their ears listening to God only knows what. Sometimes I listen to a bit of it
myself and it scares me. This is a good thing. My parents were horrified by my
Queen LPs, just as their parents were equally distressed by Mel Torme. Imagine
that – Mel Torme as the corrupter of a nation’s youth… But I digress. As a music
teacher and full time music fan, I’m curious about the stuff my kids are
listening to and I ask a bunch of dad questions – “Who is this?”, “What else
have they done?”, “Is it from an album?”…you know. Dad stuff. My kids couldn’t
tell me. Like the vast majority of their generation, they’ve plucked music out
of the air and out of context and they treat it like chewing gum.

I got my first album for Christmas in 1976. It was Queen’s “A
Night At The Opera”. I’d only asked for it, because a schoolfriend had bought
it into class and I completely fell in love with the way it looked. It was like
a work of art from another planet. I begged for it and I got it and the joy I
felt when I saw that skinny, square package leaning up against our fake
Christmas tree was like nothing else. I played it constantly. Mom and dad had
recently upgraded our coffin shaped record player (purchased just after the
second world war…) to a super-duper music centre with a record player and a
built in tape recorder. Swanky eh? I’d put that record on and take it all in. I
didn’t skip any tunes. That was cheating. I was there for the duration. I’d
flip that cover over and over, staring at the pictures of the exotic creatures
that made this music, poring over the lyrics, the credits…everything. It was my
musical education. When I got more albums, I was delighted when I recognised
names from previous purchases. “Roy Thomas Baker” was the coolest name I’d ever
seen. He cropped up a lot. The cover, the credits, even the matrix number by
the label were important. They had to be, or what were they doing on this
amazing piece of art that was blowing my mind on a regular basis?

So, what’s my point?

It’s to do with context. Today, we can listen to anything at
any time in any place. This is cool. But it means that we completely bypass the
context. The 13 year old Queen fan that I was in 1976 would not dream of
skipping over tracks on “A Night At The Opera”, because that was like
travelling to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa and only looking at her nose.
Some tunes popped out straight away – “Bohemian Rhapsody” obviously and “You’re
My Best Friend”. God, I loved those tunes. But after a while, other songs
percolated to the surface. And guess what – those are the songs that I enjoy
the most when I play that album in 2017. I put the time in and I get more pleasure
from that record now than I did at 13. Who knew?

An album is a journey.

That’s not New Age tomfoolery. That’s a real thing. The best
albums take you from Point A to Point Whatever, taking in a whole heap of stuff
on the way. You may not understand it all, but some of those challenging bits
are there to make the good things even better. If you listen to “Revolver” and
skip “Yellow Submarine” you’re doing yourself a bit of an injustice… that’s the
yin to the yang of “Here, There and Everywhere” and a moment of respite before
we go psychedelic with “She Said, She Said”.It’s there because it has to be there. The road may be bumpy, but it’ll
smooth out later.

An album is an education.

I love MP3s. The convenience is incredible. I can walk
around with hundreds of hours of music in my pocket. If I want a bit of aural
wallpaper, MP3’s will do. But that’s not listening. That music is happening in
spite of you, not because of you. If I want to listen – really listen - then
some ritual is involved. The album goes on (I’m a CD man myself, but please
don’t hate me, vinyl aficionados…) and I get ready to immerse myself in it. I
need to know who’s playing bassoon. I need to know who the assistant engineer
was. Who took the photographs? It’s like reading a book. You need to know who
the characters are and what they do, because one of them might crop up later
and do something that’ll change the story. That’s why having a physical,
tangible thing is SO important. You read and learn. We have a generation of
music fans who are growing up and having no clue what a producer or engineer does.
Or even who the singer in the band is. All those amazing technicians are
wrangling beautiful noises from the ether and no one knows who they are or what
they do. How the hell has that been allowed to happen? No George Martin – No
“Sergeant Pepper”. No Max Martin – No Britney Spears. These people deserve our
respect.

If you need any further proof that an album is an education
then I offer myself up as an example – I read those liner notes and immersed
myself in that music. I’ve been teaching Popular Music and Media in schools for
the last twenty years. I’m still learning

In my Brave New World, it won’t be compulsory to clear your
diary every time you want to crank some tunes, but active listening should not
be a thing of the past. We need to get back into the habit of putting an album
on with no distractions other than the art that accompanies it and really
listening. The details. The sound of the room that the musicians who made that
music were in. Don’t skip tracks. They are there for a reason. Thom Yorke put
“Fitter Happier” on “OK Computer” because he says it belongs there. Do you
wanna argue with that guy?

Musicians spend a lifetime perfecting what they do, just for
us to semi-ignore it while we’re cooking pasta. Maybe we need to pay closer
attention to their art. If you’re still on the fence, try this True Life Story:
Following a tragic onstage accident which left him a quadriplegic, Curtis
Mayfield didn’t give up on music. To make his 1996 album “New World Order” he
had to record his vocals by lying on the studio floor, singing two or three
lines at a time as that was the only way his lungs would operate. He worked
tirelessly with the musicians, overseeing every note and every production
decision. All he had was his voice and an incredible mind. Knowing that, when
you listen to “New World Order”, how could you possibly flip around the album
as if you were looking for the sports channel on TV? Curtis deserves your
respect.

Wednesday, 14 June 2017

I've cleared up the old individual Be Bop Deluxe live recording links and plopped them all here for your convenience. You really should grab them all, 'cos Bill Nelson is ace. I've removed a couple of recordings which are now available as part of the "Be Bop Deluxe at the BBC 1974-1978" set, but I have included their mega rare first Top gear session.

Top Gear Session: 09 73
(Decent quality recording of the first Be-Bop Peel session with two unreleased tunes - essential)

John Peel intro
Axe Victim
John Peel intro
Bluesy Ruby
John Peel intro
Tomorrow the World
John Peel intro
___________________________________________14 06 75 London Hippodrome
(Fantastic quality BBC recording that's not on the official compilation - shame)

Fair exchange
Stage whispers
Life in the air age
Sister seagull
Adventures in a Yorkshire landscape
Maid in Heaven
Ships in the night
Blues improvisation
Blazing apostles
___________________________________________

Life in the air age
Orphans of Babylon
Sister seagull
Made in Heaven
Bring back the spark
Kiss of light
Fair exchange
Twilight capers
Modern music
dancing in the moonlight (all alone)
Honeymoon on mars
Lost in the neon world
Dance of the Uncle Sam humanoids
Modern music (reprise)
Forbidden lovers
Terminal street
Blazing apostles
___________________________________________

Radio intro
Fair exchange
Stage whispers
Life in the air age
Cryng to the sky
Ships in the night
Sister seagull
Maid in Heaven
Blazing apostles
No trains to Heaven
___________________________________________

Sunday, 11 June 2017

Adam West could have invented a cure for everything,
brokered a deal which lead to world peace and correctly deduced the ingredients
of McDonald’s secret sauce, but for my generation he’ll always be Batman.

Every Sunday afternoon, sometime in the late sixties, I’d be
glued to our tiny, LoFi TV waiting to see how Batman and Robin had extricated
themselves from whatever bizarre contraption the Joker, Riddler or the Penguin
had lured them into. It may be camp and kitsch now, but it wasn’t then. It was
life and death. You can wax lyrical about any of the pseudo film noir versions
of the character that have appeared in the last few years, but you’ll never get
more than a grudging “s’alright…” from me. There’s only one Batman – spoiler alert
– it ain’t Christian Bale.

I met Adam West once, in rather unusual circumstances. I
worked in A Very Big Record Shop for half of the eighties and we’d often have
in store signings by artists desperate to prop up their ailing careers or newer
artists trying to drum up support for some piece of tawdry nonsense they were attempting
to sell to people who should know better. Anyhoo, some marketing genius decided
the time was right to issue the first Batman movie on VHS. There will now be a
short pause, while younger readers Google “VHS”. To promote this momentous
event, Mr West was dusted off and sent on a signing tour of Very Big Record
Shops, one of which was the one I worked in. The day duly arrived for him to
appear and much to my chagrin, I had drawn the short straw and I was timetabled
to be in a different department to Batman. I sulked off to the staffroom and
started to make myself a peanut butter sandwich, while scowling and muttering.
I thought I was alone in the room. I wasn’t. I turned around from my terrible
pre-school lunch, only to find Adam West – my pre-school hero – staring intently
at my sandwich. We looked at each other for about 10 seconds, which seemed to
last about an hour before I spoke. “Would you like a sandwich?” It was the best
I could do, under the circumstances. Batman remained silent, but a confused
look spread across his face. He considered my proposition for a quite a while,
before he replied “Do you think I’m hungry? Do you think I need food?” Not in
an aggressive way – he was genuinely asking me if he needed something to eat.
It was that point that two of his minders/assistants/nurses appeared and led
him gently, but firmly onto the shop floor. On the way however, he scribbled
over every one of those insurance and public liability documents that shops are
legally bound to display, thus rendering them null and void. What a guy.

I did get him to sign my copy of the Jan and Dean version of
the Batman theme tune tho’.

When he appeared as the fantastic “Mayor West” character in “Family
Guy”, I was delighted. I was also thrilled that his on-screen persona matched
exactly that of the man I had a brief and bizarre interaction with sometime in
the eighties.

Thursday, 1 June 2017

I’ve
played in a lot of bands. I’m serious…a LOT of bands. Most of these
were pretty groovy – nice chaps, good tunes, some enjoyable roadtrips
and a hatful of good memories. Obviously, no riches or enormous fame or
I’d have one of my uniformed minions type this for me whilst I snacked
on a Swans Neck Kebab, but some good times. With the good, with
depressing inevitability, must come the bad. Hot on the heels of my last
‘Rushbo’s Guide’ post, here’s part two…just when you thought it
couldn’t get any worse, along comes…The Bikers Wake.

It’s very
rare that any of my Pop Combos are in the right place at the right time,
but it did happen once. It’s the early 90s and everyone is tearing
holes in their jeans, buying Fuzzboxes and generally ‘Rocking Out’. And
so was I. This time around I was the Bassist in the delightfully named
‘Diabolo Go’. Our speciality…Pearl Jam meets the Manic Street Preachers,
topped with some pseudo Jim Morrison-esque lyrics. We ticked all the
right boxes and the only thing that held us back was the fact that we
hailed from Birmingham – then about as hip as Pat Boone. But we
rehearsed our butts off and we were a decent little Rockin’ band.

Ah rehearsals…we shared a local rehearsal space with a local (and very successful) Prog Rock band called Ark. Very
big in Italy they were, apparently. The facility was run by an affable
chap called Fin, notable for being the Bassist in a Metal band called
The Handsome Beasts. Never has a band been LESS aptly named. Now this is where the story starts…

﻿

It
was a Tuesday night and probably drizzling outside. Not that we would
have known as our lock-up was untroubled by natural light…or
ventilation. But we liked it that way. We were halfway through one of
our thinly veiled excuses for a Wah-wah freakout, when in runs Fin in a
state of high excitement, waving his arms for us to stop. ‘Lads,
lads…I’ve got a gig for you! No money, but a massive Rock audience. Get
in the Transit van, we’ve only got an hour to get there!’ No money.
There was never any money. Excited by the opportunity to play in front
of something other than Arks intimidating and expensive Italian funded
equipment, we loaded our gear into the back of Fin’s van and set off.
Uncharacteristically, I blagged the shotgun seat and started to get a
few details about this mysterious, impromptu gig. Apparently, the
organisers had been let down by a band at the last minute and the venue
owner turned them on to Fin. ‘Sounds plausible’, thought I. He was a bit
more reticent about the remaining arrangements, but I was prepared to
let that go. After all, it was a gig in front of a ‘big Rock audience’.

The
gig turned out to be at The Breedon bar. A great venue – I’d seen a ton
of bands there and some of my heroes (American Music Club! Green On
Red!) had graced the stage. So far so good. We pulled into the car park
which was FULL of expensive and opulently chromed motorbikes. Proper
motorbikes. ‘Easy Rider’ motorbikes. Oh jeez…it’s a bikers gig. Now for
some reason, I’ve never really got on with the biking fraternity…I am
sure they’re all lovely people who spend freely at the bar and do tons
of charity work, but I just feel incredibly uncomfortable in their
presence. And there were about 200 of ‘em in pretty small space, right
here. We unloaded the van and my apprehension was shared by the rest of
the guys in the band. No one seemed to be having a lot of fun – in fact
there was a really sombre air in the place. Wait a minute…why are all
these guys wearing black armbands? Yep. It was a wake. Fin had tricked
us into playing a wake. No wonder the other band had pulled out.

﻿﻿﻿

"It just needs cleaning..."

We
unloaded the gear. ‘Led Zeppelin IV’ played over the PA and no-one
smiled. Occasionally a glass smashed and voices were raised, followed by
an uneasy détente. This was not going to be a good night for anyone,
especially us. I dutifully set up my trusty Bass, taking care to put it
into dropped D tuning for our first, epic number. Satisfied, I left the
stage and hid in the toilet for about 20 minutes. It was in there that I
heard the sound of music…not ‘Led Zeppelin IV’ which had been playing
on a loop since our arrival, but a Bluesy jam. I left the safety of the
urinal, only to find three bikers had ‘borrowed’ our gear and were
jamming away in the key of A. All apart from the guy on the Bass –
sorry, MY Bass, who was looking bemused. I jumped on stage and told him
the Bass was in a weird tuning and maybe I should carry on from here. He
grunted and thrust the Bass back at me. I strapped it on and ploughed
through ten minutes of lack-lustre 12 bar strummage. After that, we had a
few minutes before showtime, so I raced to the bar to get something to
take the mania off the whole sorry affair. It was there I met the
erstwhile Bassist who told me the back story to the gig. Apparently, the
wake was for a biker in a local chapter who had come off his bike in
‘dubious circumstances’. ‘See them?’ he pointed at a group in the
corner. ‘They reckon he was killed by them’. He pointed to an equally
dour looking bunch. ‘But they…’ he pointed to a third group ‘reckon it
was them’. He pointed to a fourth. ‘So why aren’t they beating each
other up?’ I asked, nervously. ‘Truce’ he replied. ‘Until midnight
tonight’. I checked my watch. 10.50pm. Shit. I quickly shared this
information with my bandmates and we ran on stage to get this over with.
We waited patiently for ‘Stairway To Heaven’ to finish as we thought
we’d be beaten up if we interrupted that… Finally, we caught our breath
and lurched into song number one. And so it began….﻿﻿

The
first song had a great ‘car crash’ ending where we all played the final
chord over and over, finishing off with a highly choreographed
KA-BLAMM! accompanied by a heroic, Iggy-esque leap into the air. One
person clapped. It was Fin on the sound desk. We raced through an hours
worth of material in 50 minutes. It was at this gig we realised that
almost all of our songs had the words ‘Death’, ‘Ghost’ or ‘Murder’ in
the lyrics, which were hastily changed on the fly by our quick thinking
and terrified lead vocalist. After a few songs, even Fin stopped
clapping and the only noises we heard between songs were the gritting of
teeth, glasses breaking and the odd scuffle…and the occasional muted
sob from our drummer.

'The good news is there's a big crowd out there. The bad news is they're all carrying machetes andbaying for your blood...'

At
11.45, we finished. As the last chord rang around the room, we started
yanking out jack leads and tossing equipment into the back of the van.
‘No time to put it into cases boys, just get it outta here!’ As we were
frenziedly throwing stuff off the stage, a large biker collared
Chrissie, our drummer. He gesticulated sharply to the aged Piano to the
right of the stage. ‘Ay mate, d’yow play Pianner?’ Relieved that it
wasn’t a death threat, Chrissie smiled and shook his head. ‘Y’ow can’t
play the fuckin’ Drums either’ came the less than friendly retort. I
have to admit that even under the shadow of doom, that made me
laugh…under my breath, of course.

﻿﻿﻿﻿By
11.58, we were all in the van, bloodied but unbowed. Fin put his foot
to the floor and we raced out of the car park. It was a while before
anyone could speak, so the usual post gig autopsy would have to wait
until another, less stressful night. About two miles down the road, we
passed a fleet of Police cars racing in the opposite direction, blue
lights flashing. I checked my watch. The time was 12.04